subota, 16. srpnja 2011.

Solyndra by CCRES

CROATIAN CENTER of RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES

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Solyndra Fab 2 Hitting Production Targets

SOLAR TODAY tours the Solyndra factory.

By Seth Masia

Solyndra, the spanking-new, fully automated photovoltaic (PV) factory in Fremont, Calif., has hit some important production targets this year. According to a press release, the company shipped 70,000 modules in the first quarter of 2011, doubled U.S. sales in the first half and exported more than 50 percent of its production. It’s now shipping 2,000 modules a day, averaging 205 watts per module, in a factory running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a goal of expanding out to 200 megawatts (MW) this year and 300 MW soon. The existing buildings may eventually handle 450 MW.

Solyndra has also become a political football. A 2009 federal loan guarantee amounting to $535 million has been targeted for investigation by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) this week delivered 1,400 pages of emails concerning its final review of the loan guarantee. OMB promised more documents soon.

On Tuesday, Upton accused the OMB of stalling, and threatened a subpoena. Upton and his staff are investigating whether Solyndra deserved that loan guarantee, and a subsequent $75 million Department of Energy (DOE) loan made after the company canceled a June 2010 initial public stock offering that was supposed to raise $300 million. The company has since raised significant new venture-capital investment.

The original loan guarantee was offered, in part, because the DOE estimated the new factory would employ 3,000 workers in construction and provide 1,000 permanent production jobs. According to David Miller, director of corporate communication at the Fremont plant, the company already employs 1,100. That includes 300 workers in this building on each shift, including front office and design staff. Since the factory has reached only about a third of its production potential, it would appear that it’s on track to be a significant employer, as promised. The loan guarantee backed about 74 percent of the financing to build the new plant.

An important criterion used by the DOE in this loan guarantee program was the technology’s readiness to achieve mass production quickly. Solyndra, then a start-up, applied for the guarantee in 2006 under the Bush administration. After three years of review, the deal was offered in March 2009 — the first such loan guarantee offered under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Construction of the 1 million-square-foot LEED-certified building began in September 2009 and Fab 2 shipped its first product within a year. Solyndra then shut down the original fab 1, with its 45-MW annual capacity.

Solyndra is a copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) thin-film product, with a nominal conversion efficiency of about 13 to 14 percent. The 7,000 panels on the factory roof produce 1.23 MW to power the office space, about 25 percent of the building’s current load. That works out to 175 watts per panel, but Miller points out that the array includes a lot of early production and quality-challenged modules. “If we were to do the same system for a customer it would be about 5,000 panels,” he said. That would be 246 watts per panel, close to the company’s goal of 250 watts in the near future. The best panels going out right now test out at 220 watts.

Each tube is a multi-layer concentric assembly. The CIGS tube is of tempered glass, progressively coated with copper, indium and gallium selenide. It’s scribed in a helical pattern, and then scribed again along its length to divide the CIGS layers into 200 cells. Inside that tube is a long, thin Mylar gas bag to compensate for thermal expansion of the helium atmosphere inside the finished tube. The CIGS tube in turn is contained in an acrylic plastic tube, and the entire assembly is protected by another external tempered glass tube. A clear oily fluid sits between the acrylic and outer tubes to help refract light around the cell cylinder, and the ends are hermetically capped in much the way a fluorescent tube is sealed. One end becomes an anode, the other a cathode. So the wiring harness built into one rubber-coated structural side rail delivers a positive charge, the other negative.

If you were to roll the CIGS area out flat, it would measure 467 square centimeters. That multiplies to about 1.87 square meters for a panel. Because only half the tube faces the sun, Solyndra’s literature claims one square meter of equivalent PV surface. But to get the claimed power output at 14 percent efficiency, it’s clear that photons are also harvested on the underside of the panel, from backscatter off a high-albedo roof.

The assembly line is fully automated. One of the first workers I encountered on a tour July 11 was a squat, cubic delivery robot, autonomously carrying a pallet of material from the loading dock. This rubber-tired hod carrier broadcast the theme from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in place of its original warning beeper, which human employees had found annoying.

Once loaded into the front end of the production line, the tubes are never again touched by human hands. All inspection, cleaning, coating, scribing, assembly, sealing and testing processes are handled with linear equipment. Stationary robots handle transfers between conveyor lines, just as happens in a highly-automated flat panel factory. Human supervisors handle workstations monitoring several processes at once, with video close-ups of critical steps. A big difference: no screen printing or soldering stations.

The lines are set up to run 24/7 for three weeks at a time, and then pause for a rapid maintenance break. Miller likens the pause to a pit stop. When everything runs as designed, a stack of 40 tubes moves through the line from receiving dock to shipping dock in 24 hours.

Solyndra pitches a unique product, promising rapid, nearly tool-free installation and light footprint. Each 60-pound Solyndra “panel” is a 1-meter-by-2-meter collection of 40 tubes, designed to stand about a foot off a flat white roof. Because the wind goes through the open grid, Solyndra claims stability to 130 mph (210 kph) when the modules stand on their own snap-in-place feet. Add ballast or tethers, and wind safety goes to 180 mph (290 kph). Snow falls straight through the grid, and an array adds 2.8 pounds per square foot (13.7 kg per square meter) to roof loading. Panels are easily unsnapped and moved for roof maintenance or to accommodate new rooftop equipment. Because the sun always faces a convex surface, Miller says, the daily power curve is broader and flatter than that of a non-tracking flat panel.

Solyndra now claims more than 1,000 installations completed in more than 20 countries, totaling more than 100 MW. Regardless of what the House Committee does, the company expects black ink this year.

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PROJECT CCRES SPIRULINA 'The ongoing support from the private investment community speaks to how strongly they believe in the development of Green Crude as an alternative fuel resource, especially ability to commercialize it', says Branka Kalle, President of Council CCRES. Few consider seaweeds as a viable source of energy and protein for terrestrial animals (at least until their cost becomes more attractive). Macro-algae have been shown, however, to possess several functional properties, including those of a functional fiber, with immune-stimulating and prebiotic effects. Today, marine algal extracts are used as an additive in pig and poultry diets with promising results. Furthermore, micro-algae have been shown to contain high levels of beneficial lipids that can be used in layer and sow diets as a source of omega-3 fatty acids. Finally, both types of algae are used as an active component in clay-based anti-mycotoxin agents. For example, the treatment of clay with a macro-algal extract has been shown to increase the reactive surface of clay up to eight times. Croatian Center of Renewable Energy Sources (CCRES) offers several solutions that support the nutritional part of the production system. CCRES solutions combine algae feed additive products with their services, e.g. gut quality scoring, product application systems and customised dosing advice.

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PROJECT CCRES ALGAE BIOFUEL 'Given the right conditions, algae can double its volume overnight. Microalgae are the earth’s most productive plants –– 10 to 15 times more prolific in biomass than the fastest growing land plant exploited for biofuel production. While soy produces some 50 gallons of oil per acre per year; canola, 150 gallons; and palm, 650 gallons, algae can produce up to 15,000 gallons per acre per year. In addition, up to 50 percent (or more) of algae biomass (dry weight) is comprised of oil, whereas oil-palm trees—currently the most efficient large-scale source of feedstock oil to make biofuels—yield approximately 20 percent of their weight in oil', says Zeljko Serdar, President of CCRES

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CROATIAN CENTER of RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES (CCRES)• was founded in 1988 as the non-profit European Association for Renewable Energy that conducts its work independently of political parties, institutions, commercial enterprises and interest groups, • is dedicated to the cause of completely substituting for nuclear and fossil energy through renewable energy, • regards solar energy supply as essential to preserve the natural resources and a prerequisite for a sustainable economy,• acts to change conventional political priorities and common infrastructures in favor of renewable energy, from the local to the international level, • brings together expertise from the fields of politics, economy, science, and culture to promote the entry of solar energy, • provides the opportunity to play a part in the sociocultural movement for renewable energy by joining the association for everyone, • considers full renewable energy supply a momentous and visionary goal - the challenge of the century to humanity.
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